Drupal is one of the best website building platforms. Moreover, as a business, it makes for an ideal choice for building your site as:
- It is scalable, making it easy for you to expand the content of your site as your business grows.
- Offers a wide range of modules, enabling you to make your site feature-rich and make it multi-functional as and when your business matures. For instance, you can create an e-store on your basic site by deploying an e-commerce module in the future.
- It is SEO friendly and also offers a variety of SEO modules, enabling you to get your site in top search engine rankings.
- Drupal has got great accessibility standards in its core, allowing even your disabled customers and clients to find you and know about you.
- It has a dedicated security team, which gives your site safety against hackers.
Now, while these features make Drupal an excellent platform for creating a website for your business, it is important to note one thing: choosing a great platform doesn’t automatically make your site user-friendly, a vital feature for your site’s success. A non-user friendly website quickly turns site visitors away. So, before you make your site, it is important for you to know what attributes make a site user-friendly. Knowing these will help you make sure that the perfect website is made.
User-friendliness is a combination of three factors: readable content, simple navigation, and mobile compatibility. How these three can be achieved for your Drupal website? Let us find out:
Readable Content
You may have great stuff to tell your site visitors. But, unless it is not easily readable, your visitors won’t spend time reading it. Following are three key attributes which make a website’s content readable:
- Easily Scannable Content: A general user skims through content on the internet to find relevant information. And most of them do not prefer to go through long passages of content. Thus, it is important to break your text into small chunks by the use of bullet lists, sub-headings, and small paragraphs. Images also act as a good way to break text and make the content more readable.
- Readable Font: There are several beautiful fonts out there. But, it is wise just to stick to the ones which give an easy reading experience to users. Also, make sure you do not use many fonts on the same page. Just two are enough. As for highlighting a heading, just use your standard font in bold.
- The Right Color Contrast: Avoid color contrast schemes like white text on black background. Such combinations make content very difficult to read. Pick a combination which keeps your text visible.
Navigation
An uncluttered and simple navigation is the key to retaining site visitors. While several Drupal themes are offering excellent navigation, if you want a custom design, you must ensure three things:
- A Clean Layout: Make sure your site is not overcrowded with design elements. Get your content organized in the cleanest way possible. Also, make sure navigation options are placed strategically so that users find navigation easy.
- Offer A Site Map: A site map is not only good for search engine results, but it also acts as an effective mode of site navigation.
- Provide A Search Bar: A search bar helps visitors find what they’re looking for quickly. Just make sure it is placed at the top right corner of the site.
Mobile Compatibility
A site which is not compatible with browsers and mobile devices ends up being loaded with a very user unfriendly design when accessed from them. While a Drupal site is compatible with all major browsers, one needs to do some extra efforts to make it compatible with mobile devices. One of the ways to make a Drupal site mobile-friendly is to deploy the Mobile Theme module, which allows you to select a different theme for the mobile version of your site.
While attending to the above factors will make your site user-friendly, you must know it is not going to be a one-time job. You must keep testing your site for usability to ensure it is friendly to users every time, all the time.
This article is written by Angela Desouza. She is a blogger by profession. She is closely associated with Drupal India and her passion is writing about newest technologies related to web development and designing.
